1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to an improved data processing system. In particular, the present invention relates to managing availability of resources in a data center. Still more particular, the present invention relates to determining data center resource availability using multiple time domain segments.
2. Description of Related Art
In a data center, automatic provisioning of resources requires systems or users to understand the availability of the resources. However, since these resources are mostly assigned from pools, it may be difficult to determine their availability. For example, when a user wants to schedule resources, the user has to first determine the number of resources needed, the type of resources needed, the time period or duration for which the resources are needed, and the start time of the needed resource. Once the user gathers these requirements, the user has to determine based on the availability of resources from the pool whether the requirements may be satisfied.
Currently, the user has to have knowledge of the availability of the resources in the pool in order to make that decision. Alternatively, the user has to perform complex algorithms to determine resource availability. No existing mechanism is present that simply and automatically manages and reports availability of resources from a pool. Therefore, it would be advantageous to have an improved method for determining resource availability in a data center, such that a list of potential time periods satisfying a given duration and resource can be generated for presentation in a management user interface to the user.